1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a browsing terminal, a charging terminal, and systems using those terminals. Particularly, the present invention relates to a browsing terminal and a charging terminal which can effectively suppress unlawful use of contents data, and to a communication system as well as a transmitting/receiving system utilizing those terminals.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there has been a social demand in achieving a browsing terminal that can fill in for papers, with which latest newspaper contents automatically distributed from a server, i.e., news updated successively, can be read by simply being inserted to a stand (charger) without starting up a PC (personal computer).
For example, a book viewer of Amazon.com. Inc. called “Kindle” has a display using a high-resolution electronic paper (product of E Ink Corporation) with a radio connecting function to be connected to contents servers using the Internet, which allows a user to download and read on-line books, blogs, newspapers, and magazines directly without using a personal computer.
Therefore, the user can automatically receive contents distributions by subscribing to magazines, newspapers, blogs, and the like. An example of such browsing terminal is disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3099736 (Patent Document 1).
This terminal device has: a display device such as an LCD; an input device having some kinds of keys such as page-turning keys; a storage device configured with a nonvolatile memory such as an EEPROM; a main storage configured with a volatile memory such as a RAM; a device for transmitting/receiving data and the like; and a secondary battery for supplying power. Data obtained from an information server is stored to the non-volatile storage device.
An example of a transmitting/receiving system using such browsing terminal and charging device is disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3610260 (Patent Document 2). Disclosed is a system which is configured with a charging device having a data receiving circuit, and a portable information terminal having a secondary battery and a data storage built-in thereto, wherein the secondary battery is charged and information is stored to the data storage by the charger.
Further, a system for charging fees according to the charging amount of the browsing terminal and the download amount of the contents data by using the above-described system is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication 11-68994 (Patent Document 3).
With such information terminal system, it is possible to redistribute the contents obtained from a server unlawfully by downloading the contents to a PC via the charger and the like. Therefore, there faces an issue of security. Further, processing of the system becomes complicated, since the fee-charging processing is performed in two fee-charging systems, i.e., fee-charging according to the charging amount and fee-charging according to the downloaded contents.
An example of the above-described system for preventing the unlawful use of data is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication 2008-5042 (Patent Document 4). In this example, every time the power is supplied to the portable terminal, authentication information (identification number) registered to a ROM part in advance is transmitted to an authentication server to request authentication. Based on an authentication result received from the authentication server, personal data use permission information is registered to a RAM part, and the use of personal data registered to a storage part such as a flash memory is controlled based on the permission information.
As described above, the browsing terminal and the transmitting/receiving system using such terminal disclosed in Patent Documents 1 and 2 have the issues of security such as unlawful redistribution of the obtained contents. In order to suppress such issues, there may be considered the technique to employ a personal identification number using an authentication server and to employ encryption of contents as disclosed in Patent Document 4. However, the contents are stored in a storage such as a flash memory in the terminals disclosed in Patent Documents 1-4. Therefore, if the portable terminal is lost, it is possible for the identification number and the encryption to be decrypted, when the storage is taken out and stored data is downloaded unlawfully, for example.
Further, the format of the contents becomes unique due to the encryption and the like, so that it is difficult to be used with high versatility. Furthermore, there is also such an inconvenience that the system becomes complicated, since it is necessary to charge the fee according to the charging amount and the download amount as in Patent Document 4.
The Inventors of the present invention have designed the present invention in such a view that it is preferable for the contents data to be automatically erased from the terminal after a certain time has passed for the sake of security, believing that the terminal for browsing newspaper contents and the like distributed daily simply need to keep the data for about one day as the data browsing period, and its function can be narrowed down to a function of enabling browsing of about 20-30 pages of newspaper data.